


the beginning of the end

by endlessnighttimesky



Category: Vikings (TV)
Genre: I know, I'm Sorry, M/M, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-29
Updated: 2019-01-29
Packaged: 2019-10-18 23:47:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17590727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/endlessnighttimesky/pseuds/endlessnighttimesky
Summary: Ragnar dies.





	the beginning of the end

**Author's Note:**

> idk man i'm still not over these two

When he comes to you, you are on your knees—there is blood dripping from your lips, and he reaches out, strokes it from your mouth with a hand that still bears the marks of every sword that has ever kissed it, scarred by sharp tongues.

He is everything you remember him to be, and yet it is not until now that you truly realize the fragility of memory, how easily it will fragment under the weight of time.

When you speak his name, it is not through blood; when he takes your hand, it is not red.

As you stand before him, he watches you, and an image forms in your mind. You see him the way you imagine he has seen you, and within your skull a picture forms, where it is he who is on his back in the grass, where it is his eyes that flicker between stars and leaves and shadows of ravens, lips moving as he speaks to someone who is no longer beside him.

You wonder if he could hear you, and if he could, whether he listened, but you do not ask—the answer is already to be found in the way he looks at you.

There is a warmth in his gaze that feels like fire upon your very flesh—a heat you have never found anywhere else but in his skin.

Yet you fear—you fear that this is not death, that the sight before you is nothing more than a fever dream to wake from. You fear that, when you close your eyes, it will only be so you can open them and find him gone.

So you kiss him.

It is not as much a decision as it is an impulse, and for the briefest of moments, you doubt.

But that is all it is—a brief moment, because once you touch him, it is like he finds magic in your hands. Beneath them, he turns pliant, like bronze in the depths of a fire; molten, soft.

In your life, you came to rule many, yet it is not until now, in your death, that you come in possession of the only power you have ever truly desired. It is not power over him, because if there is one thing man deserves to possess even when dead, it is his freedom.

No, it is a much more complex kind of power, yet one that feels simpler than any other.

It is the power to be here, with him, as you are now.

It is the power to stay.


End file.
